Breathe Read online

  Chace sucked in breath to tamp down the surge of feeling moving quickly, freezing his insides and he shifted his beam through the space. Nothing much else, no furniture, some drifts of snow that came through the holes in the ceiling or the openings in the planks.

  But in the corner opposite the sleeping area, assisting greatly in the stench, a hole was dug. As it was close to the door, Chace only had to take one step to look in it and see it was excrement and it was dug down deep. There was a large pile of dirt beside it. He shoved dirt on top, probably to aid in getting rid of the smell.

  He didn’t see to the call of nature in nature.

  He did it there.

  And he did it there because he didn’t want anyone to find it elsewhere.

  His fear of discovery was so great, he lived with his own shit.

  He lived with his own goddamned shit.

  Chace moved his beam across the dirt along the wall.

  There were three other piles, dirt loose on top, small mounds.

  Fucking shit, he’d been there awhile.

  Fucking shit, he’d been there awhile.

  “Jesus Christ,” Chace whispered.

  “Brother, he’s safe now, got sweet sittin’ right beside his hospital bed,” Deck said quietly from beside him.

  “Jesus Christ,” Chace repeated.

  “I fucked up with the homeless guy, I gotta let that go and Chace, man, you gotta work past this and let it go,” Deck went on.

  Chace stared at the hole.

  Deck was silent, giving him his moment.

  Then he stopped being silent.

  “Do not let CPS get their hands on this kid,” Deck whispered.

  Chace nodded, his eyes still on that fucking hole.

  “Whatever drove him to this desperation, do not set his ass in the system,” Deck went on and Chace turned, cutting his eyes to his friend.

  “He’s not goin’ into the system.”

  Deck held his gaze.

  Then he nodded.

  Chace’s phone rang and he pulled it out as he walked around Deck and got the fuck out of that shed.

  Once he was breathing clean air again, he took the call and put it to his ear.

  “Keaton.”

  “Chace, Silas,” Silas replied. “Listen, son, visiting hours are over and they made Sondra and Faye leave the room. Sondra’s got Faye in her Cherokee, we talked her into leavin’. Nothin’ she can do sittin’ in the waiting room and whatever she can do tomorrow she’ll do it better if she gets a little rest. We’re takin’ her home.”

  “Right,” Chace muttered.

  Silas said nothing.

  “I’m still at the shed, Silas,” Chace told him when this silence stretched.

  “Okay, son, but you didn’t answer my question,” Silas stated.

  Chace blinked.

  What question?

  “Sorry, didn’t catch the question.”

  “We’re takin’ Faye home.”

  “Got that.”

  “Son, I need to know which home we’re takin’ her to.”

  Jesus.

  Was the church deacon Dad of the virgin girlfriend he’d deflowered asking him which bed he wanted to sleep in with his daughter that night?

  “Yours or hers?” Silas continued.

  Fucking hell, he was.

  Chace quickly processed this and the question and figured Faye would want familiarity around her.

  “Faye’s,” he told Silas.

  “Right. You gonna be long?”

  “I’m leaving in five, trek to Sioux is about ten minutes, bit more and then I’ll be there a couple minutes after that.”

  “Right. We’re idling, ready to leave now. We’ll probably arrive around the same time. See you there. If you get hung up, see you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow?

  He didn’t ask.

  He just said, “Right, Silas.”

  “If I’m not there when you get there,” Silas continued, his voice soft. “See to my girl. Like her Momma, Faye is, in a lotta ways and not just hair and temper. She can stand strong through a lot of shit, son. So strong you won’t even know inside she’s sufferin’. But inside, she’s sufferin’. And now is one of those times. You gettin’ me?”

  There it was. The reason Silas Goodknight didn’t mind Chace sleeping beside his daughter.

  “I’m getting you, Silas,” Chace replied quietly.

  “I reckon you are,” he muttered then, “’Bye, Chace.”

  “Later, Silas.”

  Chace disconnected.

  Deck, Terry and Dave got close but it was Dave who spoke.

  “What do you want done with the shit in there?”

  “You take pictures?” Chace asked.

  “Yeah, about a hundred of ‘em,” Terry answered.

  “Good,” Chace said on a jerk of his chin. “The milk crates, the books, bring them back to the Station. Careful with those books. Keep them as they are however you gotta do that. I’ll come and get them when he can have them at the hospital and I want him to have them as he keeps them. Yeah?”

  Dave gave him a nod and a, “Yeah.”

  Chace looked at Deck. “I gotta get to Faye. They’ve left the hospital.”

  “Right, Chace. I’ll help the boys here with the kid’s stuff.”

  Chace nodded, gave a chin dip to Dave and Terry then turned back the way he and Deck came.

  He walked through the dark, quiet night, the moon silvering the snow, the trees shadows, the only sound his boots crunching through the icy ground cover.

  But the only thing he saw was the inside of that shed.

  And he still smelled it.

  He needed Faye.

  Deck was right and he was wrong. He couldn’t use the thought of her to get past what he saw.

  He needed her.

  And Malachi, whoever the fuck he was, needed everything.

  * * * * *

  Chace blinked away sleep and the first thing he saw was the soft, light blue sheets of Faye’s bed.

  In other words, he saw sheets because Faye wasn’t in bed with him.

  He sat up and turned in order to angle out of bed but stilled when he saw her on her couch. She was wearing his sweater, her knees to her chest under it, stretching it out. She had on a pair of bulky, thick socks. Her neck was twisted, her chin resting on her arm which she had laid along the back of the couch, her eyes aimed out the window lit by the first kiss of dawn.

  She looked her usual cute but he also saw something in her profile he’d seen on her face before, once. Something he saw years ago. Something he didn’t remember until he saw it just then.

  It was one of the few times they’d been in the same place at the same time and she’d caught his eyes for brief seconds before she quickly looked away then moved away.

  It was right after he’d married Misty.

  It was sorrow.

  The memory, what he now knew it meant and her look sliced through him like a blade just as her head turned and her eyes caught on him.

  She bent her neck, rested her cheek to her knee but held his gaze.

  “I love this town,” she whispered.

  “Come back to bed,” he whispered back.

  “Lived in it most my life, left to get educated, came back as quick as I could.”

  “Back to bed, honey.”

  “I want to go places, see things, do things but always come right back here.”

  “Bed, darlin’.”

  “You saved this town.” She kept whispering and he felt his entire body get tight.

  “Faye, baby, come back to bed.”

  “I don’t know what secrets you hold but whatever they are, I’ll always believe you saved my town.”

  “Come to bed, Faye, or I’ll come and get you.”

  “You need to save him, Chace.” She was still whispering, her cheeks getting red and not because she was embarrassed but because she was fighting emotion.

  Chace was done.

  He threw back the covers, stalke
d to her, plucked her out of the couch and carried her back to bed. He planted her in it, joined her there, pulled the covers over them and gathered her in his arms.

  She shoved her face in his chest and one of her hands under his body so both of her arms could close around him tight.

  “If he loses his hands –” her voice was thick, scratchy, hard to hear.

  “Stop it,” he ordered gruffly.

  She sucked in a breath that broke and Chace pulled her closer.

  Last night, Sondra and Silas had still been at Faye’s when he got there because they’d arrived minutes before. They all shared a drink and talked quietly in Faye’s seating area before her parents felt comfortable with the state of their girl and left him to see to her.

  Close, long hugs were exchanged between Faye and her Mom and Dad. Chace got a shorter one, but a close one, from Sondra and a firm handshake with a couple claps on the arm from Silas.

  After they left, Chace had poured Faye another glass of wine and opened himself another beer and she’d interrogated him about what he found and where it was.

  He’d told her nothing and, as she kept at it, reiterated she didn’t need to know.

  When she gave up, she did it by looking in his eyes and saying quietly, “I already know just because you won’t tell me.”

  She likely didn’t and therefore he was glad she gave up.

  He got her another drink. To relax her and in an effort to perk her up, he told her he’d watch the show she’d been begging him to watch.

  It worked. She gave him a small smile and even acted a little excited as she sorted out the TV. She also fell asleep halfway through the episode.

  Chace, however, didn’t. Luckily she fell asleep before he had to admit that, although it had an edge of geek, the show about two brothers who were on a self-appointed mission to save the world from a variety of phantoms, demons and monsters, whose best friends were an angel who wore a trench coat and a redneck who always wore a beat up baseball cap, wasn’t all that bad.

  She woke slightly when he moved to take them to bed. So she groggily got ready and joined him there then slid straight back into sleep, curled close.

  Chace didn’t follow her for long hours.

  Now was now, Chace holding Faye in his arms while she struggled against tears.

  He tipped his chin down and against her hair told her, “Honey, let it go. Nothin’ wrong with tears.”

  “If he wakes up, I don’t want him to see my eyes red and face blotchy,” she replied, her voice still thick which meant her throat was still clogged.

  “When he wakes up, Faye, all he’s gonna see is pretty. Trust me, he’s a guy, I’m a guy, that’s all we see.”

  She shook her head as best she could seeing as her face was in his chest then she tilted her head back and caught his eyes with her brightened ones.

  “Stop being sweet,” she whispered.

  Never, he thought, caught in her crystal blue eyes.

  He pulled her up so they were face to face.

  Then he offered her an out.

  “You want something to think of, not the vast pile of shit that all of this is?”

  “Please,” she answered softly.

  “I don’t know his story. I don’t know who his people are. How he got where he is and how he is. I also don’t care. We gotta think about how we’re gonna engineer this situation so he goes from where he is now to somethin’ good. I don’t mean possibly well meaning foster carers because there could be a ‘possibly’ in that. I mean somethin’ good. That goes without saying that if CPS gets him and can’t place him in foster care, he doesn’t go to a fuckin’ home for boys.”

  Her entire face brightened and she stated immediately, “I’ll take care of him.”

  Chace knew he’d get that.

  So carefully, gently, he told her, “That isn’t going to happen.”

  “Chace –”

  “Faye,” he cut her off, “I’m a cop on a recently cleaned up local police force. I can finesse this but I gotta use that finesse above-board in a way questions won’t be asked and that kid gets what he needs. And, baby, I know you’d give him what he needs but right now you do not have the ability to do that since you live in a one room apartment over a flower shop.”

  Her nose scrunched up because this point was valid but she didn’t like it.

  She still gave into it.

  “Right.”

  “I got room but I’m also a single man who’s got a girlfriend who spends the night and, I’ll repeat, the finesse I gotta use has gotta be above-board so I can’t just take a kid under my wing without goin’ through certain motions. And my sleepover girlfriend might be frowned upon if I do.”

  “Mom and Dad,” she said immediately.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Or Krystal and Bubba or Tate and Laurie.”

  “Or Boyd and Liza,” she threw in.

  “Right, or Sunny and Shambles,” he suggested.

  “We need to make calls,” she whispered.

  “We need to make calls.”

  “Who first?” she asked.

  “Your Mom and Dad.”

  She grinned, the sorrow shifting totally out of her face. “They’ll say yes.”

  He already knew that.

  “Yeah,” he murmured.

  Her grin turned into a smile. “They’ll be great with him and we can see him all the time.”

  He knew that too.

  “Yeah,” he repeated.

  “I’ll call them now.”

  He twisted his neck, looked at her alarm clock then looked at her.

  “It’s just going six thirty.”

  “They’ll be up.”

  “Will they be up and in the disposition to discuss takin’ on a kid when they not too long ago got their house all to themselves?”

  “Yes,” she replied immediately.

  He figured that was true too.

  “Give me a kiss then grab the phone.”

  She smiled even bigger so he felt it on her lips when she gave him her mouth.

  When he broke the kiss, she moved in to give him another light one before she rolled out of his arms and reached for the phone.

  Chace rolled out of bed and moved to the bathroom.

  By the time he walked out, she was sitting at the side of her bed, off the phone, her dancing eyes came direct to him and her mouth moved.

  “They said yes.”

  Then she smiled big.

  Chace smiled back.

  Then he walked to the kitchen and made his girl breakfast.

  * * * * *

  “Chace, I get you but I haven’t had time to assess the situation fully yet. What I already know –” Karena Papadakis started.

  She was a Child Welfare Officer and she was standing with Chace outside the Critical Care Ward.

  “He’s a deacon at the church,” Chace cut her off to say. “She designs the Sunday programs. He mows the church lawn. Seriously, Karena, Sondra Goodknight won’t even let her twenty-nine year old daughter say ‘frak’, a made up curse word from a Sci-Fi TV show. They’ll do good by this kid.”

  He’d already told her he wanted her to place Malachi with the Goodknights and she was rightly and not surprisingly balking due to procedure.

  “They’re older,” Karena replied quietly.

  “Yeah. They are. Which means they’ve already raised three kids so they know what they’re doin’. One of those kids is the Mom of two boys. One’s the town librarian who has a Master’s Degree. The last one’s in the Army serving our country,” Chace returned.

  “They don’t have foster certification,” she told him.

  “Then get it for them,” he told her.

  “It would require home visits, foster parent classes –” she began.

  “The state he’s in, Karena, he’s not gonna be discharged tomorrow,” Chace pointed out. “You have time and what you already know about that kid and the more you’ll find out, I know you, you’ll bust your hump to fast-track it.”

/>   He was not wrong about this. There were people who found jobs. Karena Papadakis found her calling. Her caseload wasn’t exactly light but it also wasn’t what a person in a similar position in a city would be. This gave her plenty of time to do her job the way she’d probably break her back to do it even if her caseload was double. And that was, with care.

  She held his eyes and then cautiously reminded him, “Medical reports say this kid may be special needs. The history you gave me tells me he already is.”

  “You know I won’t let that kid down. You don’t know this but you can take my word my woman won’t let him down. They’re her parents. She’s got nephews close to his age. Her sister lives in Gnaw Bone. You place this kid with the Goodknights, he goes from livin’ in his own shit in a shed in the middle of nowhere to livin’ in a modified Brady Bunch house ten minutes out of town with a good, close family who, I assure you, can handle special needs. These people got so much goodness, Karena, they can handle anything.”

  “Chace,” she said softly, “I’ve heard what you and Faye Goodknight have been doing for this boy but –”

  She stopped speaking, her body jerked and her eyes went over his shoulder so Chace twisted his torso to see Silas bustling up.

  “Heya,” he dipped his chin to Karena on a grin when he stopped at their side and muttered a further. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  Then he turned to Chace and jerked up a box Chace didn’t get a good look at before he kept speaking.

  “Lookee here, Chace,” he shook the box. “After church, me and Sondra went real quick to the mall. My Faye says Malachi likes to read lots and since his hands are messed up, got him one of those fancy shmancy eReaders.” He shook the box again. “Guy at the electronics store, he said all he’s gotta do is press a button on the side to turn the page. They even had little stands he can set it in to hold it up so he doesn’t have to hold it himself. So we got him one of those too. ‘Til he gets his hands back, he can keep right on readin’ cause I figure he can press a button.” He lowered the box, dropped his head and studied it murmuring, “Gotta turn it on at the bottom with a slide doohickey but I figure Sondra, Faye, she’s around, or me could set him up to get him goin’.”

  Sondra caught up, didn’t seem to notice Karena at all and lifted a bag toward Chace. Chace also didn’t get a chance to look at it before she dropped it and started talking.